When the “blogging revolution” first began, blogs looked like blogs and websites looked like websites. One could easily tell the difference.
Then WordPress came along and everything changed. Now, it’s getting more difficult to tell if a website was built using a “blogging” CMS tool like WordPress, or if it’s been developed using a traditional web editor tool. Not so much in terms of what the sites are being used for, but in terms of website design and also being able to tell what’s “under the hood”.
(Can You Tell Which Application Is Powering A Website?)
For many website owners, understanding the difference between a CMS tool like WordPress and other website-building tools is huge, not so much in terms of the technical differences, but more importantly, in terms of the areas that the majority of website owners are mostly concerned with, like web development costs, ease of use, ability to maintain the website up-to-date, managing web content, etc.
Think about this …
Which of the options below would you choose?
A) An eye-catching, professional-looking website that is expensive to build, or
B) The same eye-catching, professional-looking website, but at a much cheaper cost than the cost of getting option ”A” above built.
If you decided to go with option ”B” above, then you need to learn more about WordPress, why WordPress can provide you with a beautiful website that will normally cost far less to build than websites which are built with web-building software … and how to tell the two apart!
WordPress is the world’s most used online publishing platform and content management system (CMS). It is a flexible and powerful CMS application that is ideally suited for all businesses and non-technical users.
Whether your reason for having a web site is for personal blogging or business use, WordPress is easy enough for a novice with no knowledge of web coding to use and manage, yet it offers many helpful add-ons that make your web presence extremely effective when it comes to getting your content published and indexed by search engines, promoting visitor engagement, generating business leads and sales, enhancing your site’s functionality, scalability, etc.
With almost one in every five websites around the world being powered by WordPress, chances are that if you already own a website, your site is probably powered by WordPress too.
And if you don’t have a website yet, or are considering getting a website built, then wouldn’t it be great to show your web developer an existing website with the design and layout that you like, know that it was built with WordPress and that you can, therefore, get something similarly built for your business for a much smaller cost?
Is My Web Site WordPress?
Do you need to know if a website uses WordPress? Maybe you’ve come to this page because you’ve read or heard wonderful things about all of the great advantages of using WordPress, and you’re now wondering if your site was built using WordPress, or some other website application.
Also, have you ever looked at a competitor’s website and wondered what they’re doing to try and get better results online?
Knowing if your competitor’s site is built with WordPress can tell you a few things about their strategies and methods, such as what themes or plugins they are using.
Here are a number of methods you can use to quickly tell if a website is powered by WordPress:
Look At Your Page Source Code
If you know how to access the source code of a web page (e.g. Firefox Menu > Web Developer > Page Source if using Firefox, or Google Menu > More Tools > View Source if using Google Chrome), you can look for obvious tell-tale footprints that the site was built using WordPress …
(View the web page source code using Firefox)
Suppose that you are surfing the web and you come across a site that you like, and you wonder if the site uses WordPress …
First, bring up the site’s source code on your screen, using the methods described above.
Once the source code of the page loads on your screen, search for “wp-content” either by visually scanning the code …
Or use the browser’s “Find” function …
(Use the Firefox browser ‘Find’ function)
This will tell you if the site runs on WordPress or not.
Note: If you do not see “wp-content” within the page source code, it does not mean that this is not a WordPress site.
There are other ways to find out if a site was built using WordPress, as we will soon be discussing.
As the point of this post is to help non “techies”, however, below you will find a number of easier methods you can use to check if your site is built using WordPress other than searching the source code.
Simply Ask Your Website Developer
While this may seem like the logical thing to do, a number of web developers, for whatever reason, will build clients a website and not tell them it’s WordPress.
If you hired a website developer or got somebody else to build you a website, just ask your web developer or whoever built your web site if your site was built using WordPress.
That was simple, huh?
Okay … what if you can’t get in touch with your website developer, or what if you’ve come across a site that you really like while browsing the net and you really need to know if the site was built with WordPress?
Check Below The Footer
If the site uses a WP theme where the site them template has not been customized, you can typically find a “Proudly powered by WordPress” notice shown below the footer area …
(Proudly Powered by WordPress – site footer area)
If these simple methods haven’t helped you, here are some other ways of identifying WordPress sites …
Online Tools That Tell You If A Website Has Been Built With WordPress
Here are a couple of sites that will tell you if your website uses WordPress or not, and what themes or plugins the site uses …
Is It WordPress?
(Is It WordPress? – WP Checker)
IsItWP.com is a free tool that can tell you very quickly if a website runs on WordPress or not.
Using this tool is super simple. Just paste the URL of the website into the search field and click the button.
It will search through the page code on the URL and tell you if the site was built using WordPress, and if so, it will even tell you which version of WordPress it is currently using …
If the site is not a WP web site or blog, you will get a message like the one below …
To use this tool, go here:
Advanced WP Theme Checker by Satori
(WordPress Theme Detector)
WordPress Theme Detector by Satori Studio is a free tool that can help determine whether or not a website uses WordPress as its CMS engine; it will also tell you which theme the site is using and provide a link to the theme’s official page.
To use this tool, paste the URL of a web page (it doesn’t have to be the home page) into the ‘Enter website URL’ field and click on the ‘What WordPress theme is that?’ button …
(Enter website URL and click the button)
The Detector will automatically scan the website and output its theme information …
(WordPress Theme Detector displays theme results)
If a website is built with WordPress but the theme is too customized to contain any traces of its origins, the Detector will still let you know it’s a WP site by outputting a message on the right.
(Modified WordPress theme message)
If the website is not using WordPress at all, the tool will also let you know …
(This website is not WordPress)
You can try the Detector yourself by visiting this link:
Wappalyzer – Add-On For Firefox / Chrome Browser
(Wappalyzer – Browser Add-On (Firefox / Chrome))
If you browse the net using either Firefox or Google Chrome and would like to be able to tell if the sites that you are visiting are WordPress-powered, then Wappalyzer is a useful extension to install on your browser.
Wappalyzer helps you identify what type of software is installed in the sites while you are browsing.
According to their website …
“Wappalyzer is a browser extension that uncovers the technologies used on websites. It detects content management systems, eCommerce platforms, web servers, JavaScript frameworks, analytics tools and many more.”
Wappalyzer is also very easy to install.
After installing Wappalyzer, icons will display in your browser, next to the site URL identifying which software is installed on all the sites you are visiting …
If the WordPress icon shows up on your browser menu (as shown in the screen shot above), then the site uses WordPress.
(A WordPress site!)
Visit the Wappalyzer extension website here:
SpyBar
(SpyBar – Browser Addon For WordPress)
SpyBar is a browser addon that lets you ‘reverse engineer’ any WordPress site you visit and see which WordPress plugins and themes are being used, right inside your web browser …
(SpyBar – Discover WordPress Plugins And Themes Used By Your Competitors)
SpyBar can be installed as a browser extension on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox and is compatible with PC and Mac.
To download or learn more about SpyBar, go here:
Plugin Sniper
(Plugin Sniper – Find out what plugins a WordPress site is using)
Plugin Sniper lets you find out what plugins a WordPress site is using. This is a useful tool if you want to know what WordPress plugins are being used by your competitors.
Plugin Sniper is also a useful tool for researching what kinds of plugins businesses in certain niches are using …
(Search WordPress sites by categories and location)
To download or learn more about Plugin Sniper, go here:
I hope you have found this the information in this tutorial useful.
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"Wow! I never knew there's so much to learn about WordPress! I bought one of the WordPress for Dummies three years ago, such authors need to be on this course!" - Rich Law, Create A Blog Now